Generally, in the field of cellular wireless communication it is known that base nodes of cellular networks require knowledge of other base nodes of the same cellular network nearby, in particular in order to conduct handover procedures for wireless devices operating in said cellular network.
Currently in such base nodes information about neighbouring base nodes is stored as neighbour relation data, in particular in neighbour relationship tables (NRT). This information is used to be provided by the network operator as part of the network planning tasks.
With cellular networks following the LTE standard a new concept was introduced (3GPP TS 32.500) which is called self-organizing networks (SON). This concept solves the problem of previous wireless technology standards that with a new base node installed in the field, the neighbour relationship tables of the new base node and the base nodes in the proximity needed to be updated, which causes remarkable effort for network planning. Instead, as part of the SON concept the wireless devices operating in the cellular network carry out measurements of transmissions from detectable base nodes and send measurement reports as part of the mobility management to the base nodes, where they are operating in. The same applies to the new base node once the first wireless devices decide to perform a reselection towards this new base node. The information provided with these measurement reports are used for updating the neighbour relationship tables.
However, In the context of machine-type communication (MTC) a plurality of devices are in use, which remain on a fixed position, e.g. installed as metering devices, vending machines, home security devices etc. For those so-called low-mobility devices it is known from EP 2 521 397 A1 that in order to reduce network signalling load and power consumption of the device, the technically unnecessary measurements and reporting of neighbour base nodes signalling strength measurements are strongly reduced, if not fully omitted.
On the other hand exactly the low-mobility devices with a known and reliable location are those, whose measurements reports as part of the self-organizing networks are the most favourable ones for the base nodes. This is due to the situation that changes of measurement results measured by a defined low-mobility device are not impacted by movement and therefore need to indicate a different reason for the changes, while constant measurement results are not accidentally constant but indicate real constant conditions. For measurements from moving wireless devices none of these conclusions can be made. Hence, those measurements are far more reliable for a base node than those of moving wireless devices.
It is therefore the goal of present invention to provide a solution which allows for a self-organizing network to receive measurement reports from wireless devices with low-mobility measurement behaviour.
Further alternative and advantageous solutions would, accordingly, be desirable in the art.